Chicken and Duck Talk (1988)

Possesses a cultural specificity and an incisive understanding of people

Rich with local detail, Chicken and Duck Talk serves up plenty of slapstick, overacting and situation comedy thanks to its satirical look at Hong Kong culture and its robust understanding of its locals. The conflict between ingrained cultural institutions, such as the Hong Kong-style café, and corporate chains like McDonald's has long been an issue in Hong Kong, and the film smartly satirises that situation. Be it the reactionary tactics that are exaggerated business strategies, using fast, cheap imitation as a way to give the business an edge. Or writer and star Michael Hui's pragmatic, penny-pinching ways are an exaggeration of the Hong Kong people and the film's local pride, whether appropriate or inflated. Ordinary people can be lousy, and the emotions they operate from are so basic that it's easy to understand and even sympathise with them. People are naturally difficult, and Michael Hui captures that reality clearly and with self-deprecating humour. While the film has mostly good intentions and a very moral heart to it, it does slip up on occasion with some questionable production values, lacklustre direction, generous overacting and dated humour. That being said, Richard Yuen delivers a suitably funky score which includes not-so-subtle riffs on both the classic James Bond theme and, bizarrely, Streets of Fire. I can't believe I even caught that. Qualifying as an accurate, if exaggerated, primer on the daily lives and ingrained values of Hong Kong and its people, Chicken and Duck Talk is imbued with a generous amount of energy that's difficult to hate, even when it's got sit-com style family conflicts, sudden introductions of sentimentality or mild cases of xenophobia.

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